Female students shown opportunities in engineering at Sarnia event

Something telling about the power of examples and role models happened once during an Engineer in Residence program offered by Professional Engineers Ontario.

“One of our female engineers was in a classroom,” said Lauren Blake, with the group’s Sarnia chapter, “and a little boy put up his hand and said, ‘Can men be engineers too?’”

Engineering has traditionally attracted many more men than woman but an event Professional Engineers Ontario helped host Saturday in Sarnia at Great Lakes Secondary School was trying to help change that by bringing together women engineers and young women.

A group of approximately 40 girls from Grade 7 through 10 in Sarnia-Lambton, and their parents, took part in Go ENG Girl, a one-day event run by London’s Western University with panels and discussions, a keynote speech by Katherine Down, butyl operations manager at Arlanxeo, and hands-on activities.

It was the first time the event has been held in Sarnia, after a session planned last year didn’t sign up enough participants.

Blake said promoting engineering with young people is one of the chapter’s mandates, and Saturday’s event was designed to offer engineering as an opportunity for young women.

“We’re just opening up the door and showing them it could be a choice,” she said.

Blake added that didn’t happen for her until she was nearing

high school graduation and her father raised the idea.

“I had never even thought about engineering until then.”

Because Sarnia-Lambton is home to refineries and chemical manufacturers, many engineers work in the community but “we’re definitely still the minority,” Blake said about the number of women in the profession locally, overall.

But, the number of women entering the profession is increasing, she said.

Showing engineering as a caring profession is one of the approaches taken by the Go ENG Girl program, Blake said.

“We do math and science, but the basis behind it is to help the community, helping make the world a better place through engineering,” she said.

Kelsey Lavigne, women in engineering outreach coordinator with Western, said the program is a partnership with the Ontario Network for Women in Engineering and runs in locations across the province.

The hands-on activities included working with circuits, designing a rollercoaster and coding for robots.

“We’re hoping to inspire some girls to get involved in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) and push forward with it in their high school career, as well as their future career,” Lavigne.

“And, open their eyes to the future possibilities that engineering can offer.”

According to the network, the proportion of engineering undergraduates has been around 20 per cent in recent years.

“Our goal is definitely to try and increase that,” Lavigne said.

Dylann MacLachlan, 12, a Grade 8 student at Watford’s East Lambton Elementary School, was among those taking part in Saturday’s event.

“I’ve been interested in engineering and robots and coding,” she said, adding she’s interested in becoming an engineer.

Her father, Rob MacLachlan, said it was a chance to check out options “for what she might want to do,” at an early enough age to select courses in high school needed to pursue a particular career.